The Sheriff's Christmas Surprise

Robert Blayne, her father and ever the pragmatic one, had taught her to rely on logic; Diana, her mother, to believe in miracles. In Olivia’s estimation, she needed the latter, not the former. The former was far too daunting to think about now.

When she all but collided with the six-foot-something rugged officer in a khaki uniform, she found her miracle. Or at least half of it.

It took Olivia less than a second to recover and rush over to the young, fresh-faced Hispanic woman holding her nephew.

Her heart, all but bursting with joy, leaped into her throat.

“Bobby,” she cried again, tears smarting her eyes. She blinked twice, refusing to let them escape. She’d always hated women who broke down and cried. Crying was a sign of weakness and she couldn’t allow herself to be weak, not even for a moment. Far too much depended on her being strong.

Olivia stretched out her arms to the infant, eager to take him from the petite, dark-eyed waitress.

Hesitating, Lupe looked toward Rick for guidance and he nodded. Only then did she let the baby be taken from her by the woman in the deep blue—and somewhat dusty—power suit.

Bobby felt like heaven in her arms. For a second, Olivia pressed her cheek against his, just savoring the moment, the contact.

“Oh, Bobby, I was beginning to think I’d never see you again,” she whispered to him.

Bobby wriggled, making a noise and seeking freedom. Reluctantly, Olivia loosened her hold on him, resting him against her shoulder. She’d discovered that, at least for now, it was his favorite position.

“So ‘Bobby’ is yours?” In Rick’s estimation, the question was a needless one, but he still had to ask it. There were rules to follow, even in a town as small and laid-back as Forever.

The question indicated that the sheriff thought Bobby was her son, so she said, “No.” The second the word was out, she negated her response, afraid that the man might think she was just some crazy woman, jumping at the chance to grab a baby.

God knew she probably looked the part, she thought, catching a glimpse of her reflection in the aluminum-covered bread box.

“Yes.”

The woman in the expensive suit looked just a bit flustered, her pinned-up hair coming loose in different sections. Rick allowed his amusement to show. “Is this like some kind of a Solomon thing?”

For a moment, Olivia didn’t answer. She hadn’t realized how good it would feel to have this little bundle of humanity in her arms again until she’d begun to believe that she never would.

“No.” Swaying just a little to lull the baby, Olivia continued to hold him against her shoulder as she looked at the man with the rock-solid chest and the annoying questions. “Bobby’s my nephew.” One hand cupping the back of Bobby’s downy head, she turned and scanned the all-but-empty diner. A sinking feeling was setting in again. Tina wasn’t here. “Where’s my sister?” she asked.

Rick had a question of his own for her. “I take it that’s the baby’s mother?”

At twenty-four, Tina had turned out to be much too young to be a mother. Or at least, much too immature. But, for better or for worse, Tina was still Bobby’s mother.

“Yes.”

Rick nodded, leaning back against the counter. “I was hoping you could tell me where she was.”

Damn.

Olivia focused on the small-town sheriff for the first time, her eyebrows drawing together as she did a quick assessment of the man, a skill she found useful in the context of her present vocation. She could tell if a man was being sincere, or if he was lying. The only time her ability seemed to fail her was when it came to Tina. But maybe that was because the thought of her sister lying to her, after all that they’d been through, was particularly hurtful.

She wanted to believe that Tina was better than that. Wanted to, but really couldn’t. Not any longer. Not after the disappearing act she’d pulled.

“Sheriff, I’ve been trying to find Tina and the lowlife who forced her to run off with him for the last forty-eight hours. All I know is that she should be somewhere around here.”

As she spoke, Olivia became aware that the matronly looking woman behind the counter, who was quite blatantly listening intently to every word, had placed a cup of coffee and a powdered bun on a small plate practically directly in front of her.

Olivia raised her eyes to the woman’s, an unspoken question in them.

The woman was quick to smile. “Thought you might need that right about now, honey,” the older woman said. “You look like you’re running on empty.”

Admitting a weakness, or even that she was human, was not something Olivia did readily, even to someone she’d never see again. But she had been turned so inside out these past few days, what with one thing and another, that the protest that quickly rose to her lips turned into a simple “Thank you.”

The next moment, giving in to her tightening stomach, she look a long sip of the inky coffee. And felt human again. Almost.

Watching, Miss Joan slanted a quick look toward Rick and then chuckled, pleased that, once again, her intuition had been right.

“I was gonna ask if you wanted cream and sugar with that, but I guess not.”

“Better?” Rick asked the baby’s aunt when she came up for air and set down the cup.

Olivia nodded. “Better.” Her eyes shifted toward the woman behind the counter. “How much do I owe you?” she asked, setting her purse on the counter and attempting to angle into it with one hand while still holding Bobby.

Miss Joan waved away the gesture. “It’s on the house, honey.” And then she winked. “It’s my good deed for the day. Everyone should do one good deed every day. World would be a whole lot nicer,” she declared with a finality that left no invitation for debate.

Rick had waited patiently for the almost criminally attractive woman to finish her coffee. He figured it would help her pull herself together. He wasn’t going anywhere and there was no hurry, but he did want some answers. Most of all, he wanted to know why the infant had been left on his doorstep. Was it happenstance, or was there some reason he’d been singled out?

“Is your sister an underage runaway?” he asked the baby’s aunt.

Olivia sighed. “Tina’s not underage, she’s twenty-four and technically, she’s not a runaway.” She set her mouth hard as she thought of her sister’s boyfriend. She had tried, really tried, to make him feel welcome—she should have had her head examined—and drop-kicked the jerk into the middle of next year. “He forced her to go with him.”

Rick raised an eyebrow. First things first. “Who’s he?”

Olivia laughed shortly. The sheriff had inadvertently echoed her own sentiments. Just who was the tall, gangly, brooding individual who looked like a poor, dark-haired version of a James Dean wannabe? Or maybe it was that new sensation, the actor who was playing a vampire, that Don fancied himself to resemble? Whoever Don Norman envisioned himself to be, he had managed to brainwash her sister, turning Tina into some kind of mindless lemming who would follow this worthless human being off the edge of a cliff.

Well, not while she was around, Olivia silently vowed. Not while there was a breath left in her body. If she had to, she would drag Tina back kicking and screaming and sit on her sister until she came to her senses.

But none of this did she want to share with a virtual stranger no matter how good-looking he was. Her sister’s insanely poor judgment was her business. It was not up for public scrutiny. “He is Don Norman,” she told the sheriff. The moment stretched out and she knew the man was waiting for more. “And ever since he came into my sister’s life, Norman has turned it upside down, and turned my sister into some pathetic, mindless groupie.”

“Groupie,” Rick repeated. The word had a definite connotation. He made the only logical connection. “This Norman’s a musician?”

Olivia laughed shortly again. Don thought of himself as a musician, but as far as she knew, he’d never gotten paid and was currently part of no band.

“Among other things, or so he says,” she replied crisply. “Mostly he’s just a waste of human skin.” She looked down at the baby in her arms.

Please don’t take after your father, she implored Bobby silently.

“Sounds like you don’t like him much,” Miss Joan speculated, wiping down the same spot on the counter that she’d been massaging for the past few minutes.

“No, that’s not true. I don’t like him at all,” Olivia corrected. “I tried, for Tina’s sake.” She patted the baby’s back, moving her hand in slow, small concentric circles. The repetitive movement tended to soothe him. “And for Bobby’s. But it’s really hard to like someone who repays you for putting him up for six months by stealing your jewelry.”

“He stole your jewelry?” Rick asked, his interest in the case piquing. “You’re sure that he was the one who took it and not—”

Olivia saw where the sheriff was going with this and cut him off.

“Tina didn’t have to steal anything from me. All she had to do was ask and I’d give her whatever she needed. I have been giving her everything she’s needed.” Olivia pressed her lips together. And how’s that working out for you? a voice in her head jeered. “Norman’s the thief,” Olivia insisted. “He stole the jewelry, he stole my sister. I don’t care about the jewelry, that’s replaceable,” she told the sheriff, struggling to hold on to her temper. It wasn’t easy. Just thinking of Don pushed all her buttons. “My sister is not. And I am really afraid that something terrible is going to happen to her if she stays with the man.”

She raised her eyes to the sheriff’s. It killed her to ask a stranger for help, but she knew when she was out of her element. Tina’s welfare took precedence over her pride.

“Can you help me find them, Sheriff?”

He’d always been a fairly decent judge of character. He had a feeling that the woman before him was used to taking charge of a situation. Was this actually nothing more than a glorified matter of power play? Did she resent the fact that her sister had run off with a boyfriend she disapproved of?

“If your sister left with this Norman guy of her own free will—” Rick began.

Olivia knew a refusal when she saw it coming. Quickly, she changed strategies. “All right, then go after him for stealing my jewelry. I’ll press charges. Whatever it takes to get him out of my sister’s life and mine, I’ll do it.”

“I’d be careful how I phrase that if I were you,” Rick warned her.

Olivia felt her back going up. She’d been through a lot these past few days and there was precious little left to her patience. “I’m a lawyer, I don’t get careless with words, Sheriff.”

“And there’s abandonment,” Lupe chimed in, speaking up for the first time. “You could get this guy for that.”

The word “abandonment” suddenly sank in. Olivia realized that with her mind racing a hundred miles an hour and going off in all different directions at once, she’d gotten so caught up in finding the baby, she hadn’t asked the sheriff a very basic question. There was a huge chunk of information she was missing.

“What are you doing with my nephew in the first place, Sheriff? Why do you even have him?”

“I found your nephew on my doorstep this morning when I was leaving for work,” he informed her matter-of-factly.

“On your doorstep?” Olivia echoed, stunned. “That’s impossible. Tina would have never let Bobby out of her sight.” She paled as a possible explanation came to her. “Unless something’s happened to her.” Her eyes widened as she caught hold of the sheriff’s arm, a sense of urgency telegraphing itself from her to him. “Sheriff, you’ve got to help me find—”

“Don’t go getting ahead of yourself,” Rick told her. He thought of one plausible explanation, although it was a stretch. “Maybe your sister figured that what was ahead was too dangerous for the little guy.”

He was being kind, making up an excuse to calm the blonde with the ice-blue eyes. In his heart, though, he believed that perhaps the woman’s sister had gotten bored with playing house and had decided to abandon her latest toy, leaving him in the first place that came up. Maybe they’d passed his place on their way out of town and impulsively decided to drop the baby off on his doorstep.

Technically, his mother had done that, Rick thought, leaving him and his younger sister, Ramona, with her mother-in-law. He could still remember what she’d looked like as she’d promised to be “back soon.”

“Soon” had turned into close to eighteen years. By the time she actually had returned, he didn’t need her, or her lies, in his life. She’d come back too late. He’d grown up with a substitute mother, his tough-as-nails grandmother, molding his life and Mona’s. Maria Elena had been a hard taskmaster, but her heart had been in the right place and she had made him the man he was today. And for that, he would always be grateful to the pint-size martinet.

“Or maybe Don felt that the baby was dragging them down and he told my sister to get rid of Bobby—or else,” Olivia said.

“But he is the baby’s father, isn’t he?” Lupe asked, horrified.

“The baby’s his,” Olivia allowed slowly. “But it takes more than getting a woman pregnant to make a man a father,” she said with feeling, raising her chin.

Rick saw the anger in her eyes and found the sparks oddly fascinating.

“That vermin has no more of an idea on how to be a father than a panther knows how to walk around in high heels,” Olivia declared angrily.

“Interesting imagery,” Rick commented. He glanced down at her feet and saw that she was wearing fashionable shoes whose heels could have doubled as stilts. They had to be around five inches. How did she manage to walk around in them?

“Feet hurt?” he guessed.

They did, but that was something else she wasn’t about to admit. Besides, she’d gotten used to the dull ache.

“No,” she denied. “Why do you ask?”

“Haven’t seen heels that high since the circus came through a couple of years ago.” He glanced at her shoes again, shaking his head. The women he knew were given to jeans and boots. But on the other hand, he had to admit the woman had a great set of legs. Best he’d seen in a very long time. “They just look like they might hurt.”

She lifted the shoulder the baby wasn’t leaning against in a partial shrug. Bobby’d fallen asleep and she wasn’t about to disturb him. Olivia lowered her voice. “That all depends on what you get used to,” she told him, the inflection in her voice distant.

The woman wasn’t kidding when she said she knew her way around words. “I suppose you have a point. By the way,” he said, and extended his hand toward her. “I’m Sheriff Enrique Santiago—Rick for short.”

There was no way this man came up short in any category, Olivia caught herself thinking before she blocked any more personal observations.

Where was her mind?

Impatient with her oversight—names should have been exchanged immediately—rather than put her hand into his, she wrapped her fingers around his hand, automatically assuming the dominant position. “Olivia Blayne.”

“Olivia?” he echoed. She couldn’t tell if the sheriff was amused or charmed. “Now there’s a name you don’t hear every day.” Amused, she decided, he definitely sounded amused. Why? “What do they call you?” he asked.

Undoubtedly he was waiting for her to render up a nickname, something along the lines of “Livy,” or maybe “Livia.” He couldn’t possibly be thinking of “Olive,” she thought in horror. That name conjured up the image of a certain tall, skinny cartoon character from her childhood days.

There’d been a boy in the neighborhood, an older boy—nine to her seven—Sloan something-or-other, who’d teased her mercilessly. He’d called her Olive because she had been that skinny back then. The nickname had turned into the driving force that motivated her to not only put some meat on her bones, but to get fit as well. She’d been relentless about the latter in her teens.

“Olivia,” she informed him tersely. Only Tina got to call her something else. Tina called her Livy, but right now, Olivia didn’t know if she was up to hearing that name.

Many thoughts crowded her head. She was far too worried that something had happened to her sister. She was absolutely certain that Tina would have never just left Bobby like that. Not unless she wasn’t around to prevent it.

Don’t go there!

If it turned out, mercifully, that Tina was all right, she was going to kill her sister with her bare hands for putting her through this, Olivia thought angrily.

She took a deep breath, forcing the dark thoughts into the background. Instead, she focused on the infant sleeping on her shoulder. Focused on how good, how soothing that felt, to know that he was safe and that he was here, with her. It allowed her to pretend, just for the moment, that everything would be all right. That Tina was all right.

“Where are you from?” Rick asked.

“Dallas,” she told him. A look she couldn’t read came into his eyes. “We’re both from Dallas.”

That was over four hundred miles away. She was a long way from home. “How did you happen to track them to Forever?”

“Luck,” she replied. Because she could feel his eyes on her, waiting, she elaborated. “Tina called a friend of hers, Rachel. She told Rachel that she thought she’d made a mistake, but it was too late to change things. Rachel knew I was looking for Tina so she kept Tina on as long as she could. I have a…” Olivia hesitated for a moment, looking for the right word, then settled on “friend at the cell phone’s service center.”

There was no need to say that Warner had also been someone she’d once cared about until things got too serious, spooking her. For now, maybe forever, she was committed to her career and her sister—and Bobby—and that was more than enough.

“He managed to get the location of Tina’s last call to Rachel triangulated. I used the coordinates and came here instead of Nuevo Laredo,” she said, mentioning another small town in the area. And then an idea occurred to her as she said the name. “Maybe that’s where they went,” she said hopefully.

“Easy enough to check out,” he told her. “You have a picture of your sister?”

Olivia smiled in response. It was a confident smile, the kind that lit up a room, and a man if he happened to be in the path of it, Rick speculated.

Shifting slowly so that she didn’t wake the baby, she told Rick, “I can do better than that.” Yes, he thought, I’m sure you can.

The next second, he upbraided himself for his lack of focus.

She put her hand into her purse, rifling around, searching for the copy of the picture she’d almost forgotten to bring with her. She’d had to double back to the condo in order to pick it up. Finally locating the object of her search, she pulled it out and held it up for him to see.

“It’s a picture of my sister with the slime.”

Rick bit the inside of his mouth to keep from laughing. He had a feeling that Olivia Blayne would interpret it as laughing at her and wouldn’t appreciate it.

Chapter Three

Rick studied the photograph he’d been handed.

“Not bad looking, as far as slime goes,” he commented.

The woman in the photograph looked more like a girl, really, and clearly resembled her older sister. They had the same golden-color hair, like a spring sunrise in the desert. The same bone structure as well, but while on the girl, it appeared almost too delicate, on the woman in the diner, it seemed far more classic and refined. He could see her moving with ease through influential circles in high society.

Indicating the photograph, he looked back at Olivia. “Mind if I hang on to this for a bit? I’d like to send it out with the APB.” Realizing that he was guilty of just tossing around initials that she might not be familiar with, he began to explain, “That’s an—”

“All points bulletin,” she concluded for him. “Yes I know. You don’t have to stop to break things down to their lowest level for me, Sheriff. I am familiar with some of the terms used in law enforcement.” And then, because she needed something to hang on to, something to reassure her, despite her facade of confidence and bravado, that Tina was all right, she asked, “Did you happen to see my sister when she was in town?”

Rick took another glance at the photograph. Though he sensed she wanted to ask him questions about her sister, about her condition and how she’d seemed to him, he’d seen neither of the two individuals she attempted to locate.

He shook his head. “Sorry, I didn’t.”

Miss Joan ceased overcleaning the counter and spoke up. “I did.”

Olivia instantly gravitated toward the owner of the diner. “How did she look? Was she all right?” Though Olivia had never seen any firsthand evidence of it, she strongly suspected that Don had a temper. Without a hovering older sister, he’d be free to treat Tina any way that he wanted to.

The very thought brought a numbing chill down her spine.

An intuitive look came into Miss Joan’s kind hazel eyes. “I didn’t see any bruises, if that’s what you’re asking,” the older woman told her. “But your sister did look like she could do with a decent meal and about a day’s sleep. I felt sorry for her, but there wasn’t anything anyone could do.” There was more than a trace of regret in Miss Joan’s voice. “The guy she was with kept her on a real short leash. And he didn’t seem too happy about this little fella fussing and crying,” she added, nodding toward Bobby. “In my opinion, someone needs to take that boy behind the barn for a good whopping.”

Rick could see the woman beside him growing progressively tenser. Olivia’s hands fisted, even as they held the sleeping baby against her, and her expression hardened.

“Shooting him would be better,” Olivia murmured with feeling.

He had a feeling she meant it. The woman certainly wasn’t the squeamish type, he thought. The sooner he tracked down the missing pair and sent them all on their way, the better.

Sliding off the stool, he saw the question in her eyes. “I’m going to go post that APB, see if anyone’s seen your sister and her boyfriend. You wouldn’t happen to know the kind of car they were driving, would you?”

Not only did she know the kind of car they were driving, she rattled off the make, the model, the color and the license plate for him in a single breath, right down to the long scratch on the driver’s side bumper.

“You’ve got a good eye,” Rick commented, impressed. In his experience, women who looked like Olivia Blayne didn’t know their way around cars, much less absorb that much about them.

“I’ve got a good memory,” she corrected. “Don doesn’t have two nickels to rub together. The car belongs to Tina. I bought it for her when she graduated high school.”

“Wish I had a sister like you,” Lupe said wistfully. A look from Miss Joan had her going back to filling sugar dispensers.

Rick hadn’t heard what Lupe said. He was busy studying Olivia, trying to get a handle on her. She sounded more like an indulgent parent than an older sister.

Aware of the sheriff’s penetrating scrutiny, Olivia called him on it. “What?”

“Let me get this straight. You bought your sister a car. If I understood correctly what you said, she lives with you and you took in her no-account boyfriend even when you didn’t want to.” Most women Olivia’s age either lived on their own or with a lover, not a younger sister and that sister’s deadbeat boyfriend. At least not if they could afford a place of their own, as she so obviously could.

Olivia seemed impatient for him to get to the point. “Yes?”

“Well, looking at those kinds of facts, I’d guess that you were compensating for something.” His eyes held hers. She knew she could turn away at any time, but she decided to face him down. “Were you?” he pressed.

Her first impulse was to indignantly say no, but she wouldn’t cut this short. She’d always zealously guarded her privacy, hers and Tina’s. Her second impulse was to tell this would-be Columbo in boots and a Stetson that it was none of his damn business and just walk away. But she couldn’t.